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Spammers and Virii – Perfect Together.

It looks like the two great evils taste great together, to borrow a slogan… A lot of folks out there in the virus/worm fighting community are thinking that the SoBig.F worm that is floating towards an Inbox near you might be something that, in the end, is financed by spammers. How else are worm writers going to make some cash?

And the best part is, at 2pm EST today, Friday, August 22nd, all the computers who are infected and are connected to the ‘net are to “contact” one of 20 computers that are out there somewhere for further instructions. Officials have said they’ve shut down “half” of these 20 machines, but the rest were still out there. Now as I type this it’s 1pm EST, so they’ve got 1 hour 15 minutes left to go. So what will the result be, if this “catastrophe” is allowed to happen? Many think that a flood of spam is to be unleashed. Already today I’ve seen a statistic that 50% of all emails are now spam, up from about a month ago. Dis-turbing. [update: MSNBC is reporting that it’s 3pm EST this afternoon – so like 2 hours more.]

Interestingly enough, I was, for the first time, hit with one of these worm/virus things. I managed to get the “blaster” worm on my machine, which enters your computer through Internet Protocol means, not necessarily through your email box. Gotta love that. Thankfully, I was able to find the MS patch for it and Symantec is nice enough to have a “fixer” software download. And since “blaster” denials of service the Microsoft security sites, you can’t fix the problem. Here is the Symanted Worm Removal Tool site, and here is the patch for NT4, Win2000, and WinXP. Enjoy.

Well this explains it. Gas prices went up 9.5 cents on Thursday, which explains why when I got $5 in gas on Monday, and then $10 on Tuesday, and then filled up the tank on Thursday, that the amounts were so dramatically different, proportionally. People are obviously thinking it’s “coinciding” with the Labor Day weekend in the USA, which is quite convenient, if you ask me… But what is more disturbing is that the OPEC countries are always lowering or keeping production static, when everyone has been complaining about prices forever. It’s not like we’re sitting on tons of oil, or our prices would be much lower. This is the one commodity I don’t understand why it is let to float around willy-nilly by the governing body. It directly impacts people so dramatically it’s not even funny. You wouldn’t pay $15 for 10 gallons of milk on Monday and then $16 for 10 gallons on Tuesday, would you? It’s totally a scam, and I don’t care what anyone says. It’s like the people who control the oil supply are the same people trying to tell you that there was nothing illegal going on with investment banks holding stocks on their own and making “recommendations” based on whatever analysts were thinking that day, or perhaps what kindergarten private school they wanted their kids to go to. Joke, joke, joke. [via drudge]

Now this has got to suck. You’re an actor. You’re handed a gun you think is a prop. After pulling the trigger, your fellow cast member starts bleeding for real and falls to the ground unconscious, and later dies. Soon after, police file charges against you and you’re arrested and could face 8-20 years. Now this has to get thrown out, right? I can’t be that crazy to think that.

Barr McClellan, father of current White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, is the author of a new book which tells how Lyndon B. Johnson was behind the death of John F. Kennedy. Oh, this should go over real well at the White House. I can see the conversation now – “Thanks, Dad!”

I can’t even fathom the fact that 10,000 people may have died in France during the heatwave currently swarming across most of Europe. 10,000 people? That’s insane.

Norman Solomon at the American Reporter has a pretty fun article about what would happen if journalists started acting like the “Bulworth” character that Warren Beatty played a few years ago… You can read it here

One last thing. Radley Balko over at The Agitator has a great writeup about taxing lattes out in Seattle. I’m sure that will go over really well in the short run.